On Wed, Aug 25, 2004 at 01:22:55PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > > On Wed, 25 Aug 2004, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > > > > For one thing _I_ didn't decide about xattrs anyway. And I still > > haven't seen a design from you on -fsdevel how you try to solve the > > problems with files as directories. > > Hey, files-as-directories are one of my pet things, so I have to side with > Hans on this one. I think it just makes sense. A hell of a lot more sense > than xattrs, anyway, since it allows scripts etc standard tools to touch > the attributes. > > It's the UNIX way.
Not if you allow link(2) on them. And not if you design and market your stuff as a general-purpose backdoor into kernel. Note how *EVERY* *DAMN* *OPERATION* is made possible to override by "plugins". Which is the reason for deadlocks in question, BTW. Don't fool yourself - that's what Hans is selling. Target market: ISV. Marketed product: a set of hooks, the wider the better, no matter how little sense it makes. The reason for doing that outside of core kernel: bypassing any review and being able to control the product being sold (see above). Shame that it got an actual filesystem mixed in with the marketing plans and general insanity...
